


Tears

by kikibug13



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Cosmic Cube, Cosmic Marvel, F/M, Falling In Love, Fix-It, M/M, Missing Scene, Spoilers, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-12 22:25:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3357512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikibug13/pseuds/kikibug13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Through war and across universes, beyond lovers and sometimes despite themselves, two people find out how important they are to each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tears

**Author's Note:**

  * For [akurou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akurou/gifts).



Peter was seething as he made his way through bodies that were nearly melted. He knew that Rich was alive, but only because the kid was too stubborn to die. 

The hit had been nasty. An explosion that could shake even the Nova Force defenses Rich always had up, these days (good thing, too), and then followed it up with some super acidic goop that made flesh slough off from bones and bones melt into mud. Rich was upright, Peter could see him leaning back against a rock, but he didn't seem to be able to move.

When he reached his friend (his general? He didn't merit friends, anymore) he could see his suspicion was correct. Rich was so frozen with pain that he couldn't think of how to move. And the damn thing was all over him. Peter was swearing steadily for the last good third of a click, his scanner already running analysis. It wasn't what he'd studied as acid on earth, but it was close enough that cold water would wash it away. Which was why the flarking bastards had used it on a dry, sulphur-based rock, all the powers in the universe d'ast them. 

"Nova. _Rich_. Rich, can you hear me?"

The eyes, squeezed tightly against the pain, didn't open, but there was a noise, too close to a whimper, in acknowledgment.

"Good. Focus on me, kid. 'm gonna take your hand with mine, I'm gloved. Then you're gonna fly up, and then follow where I direct you. 'm gonna make it stop, okay?"

No response came for long, agonizing moments (yeah, right. They were probably way longer and more agonizing both for Rich), but then the kid's hand turned up a bit. Ready to be taken. 

Good enough. 

They were airborne shortly after he took Rich's hand, and the time it took them to get under a cold, uncomfortable shower - Rich stripped of his uniform, Peter vacuum-ready, as much as that could be said for him - was shorter than it had taken Peter to reach him. 

The goop was brownish, with some sort of blue tinge. It tried to stick to the kid's skin, jelly-like, but the water eventually sluiced it away. The skin under it was ugly, angry, nearly black in spots, but Peter thought that could be mended. He hoped it could be mended. 

When all of the flarking stuff was gone from Rich, Peter kept him still upright under the running water and shrugged off his drenched coat. Then focused back on Rich. It was medical paste he gently lathered him with, using only his hands. The burned spots elicited more whimpers, but Rich was still pretty out of it, even if marginally conscious. Peter randomly thought that he might wanna get to touch that body when it was healthy, then firmly kicked that thought away from his mind, as it brought with it the pain of a severed link in his soul, blonde hair, courage like nothing that he--

Rich's brown eyes were open and staring at him, and his breathing was coming different, now, and Peter gratefully focused on him. Shakily, Rich's mouth opened, as he tried to put together focus for words.

"Oh, _God_ , it hurts."

"Don't you mean blue blazes?" 

"Fuck you."

It must've been bad, for Rich to swear. But he was talking again, and coherently, too. That was good, probably. Peter should turn the water off and get him to medical for proper care--

That thought was barely forming when the shock seemed to wear off enough for the pain to get past the swearing level and into screaming. The shower stall was way too small for the noise, but it got worse every time Peter tried to take the kid out of the shower, so he kept him under the cold water for a long, time. Rich's voice was raw by the time he sagged, finally drained even of his Nova stores, and then he sort of collapsed a little against Peter.

The former Star-Lord was carrying him gently, slowly, towards med bay when he realized that he hadn't had - hadn't deserved - that level of trust in a long time. The thought should have chilled him worse than the hour-long icy shower, because people trusting him meant bad things would happen to them.

He'd lie to himself if he called what he felt chilling, though. 

"You're dangerous, kid," he murmured, standing over the bed where Rich was finally resting, healing and drugged out of the pain. He wasn't sure if acknowledging the fact would make any difference, though. 

Flarking great.

***

"-and, on top of that... You're not even listening, are you, kid." Rich blinked over at Peter, then gave him a sheepish smile.

"Sorry. I was trying to rehash stuff from older wars to give us... any kind of advantage. Supply lines, that sort of thing."

"Except they're not using supply lines, they stock up at every planet they annihilate."

"Yeah. But if we manage to harry them away from enough planets..." Rich's mouth twisted. "Except the only thing that'd do is go at others faster and that won't help anything." He buried his face in his hands, fingers making the short hair over his hair stick out. "Peter, I can't make them stop. No matter what I do, they just keep on--"

"Hey." Quill's hand was firm on his wrist as he pulled one of his arms down. Rich swallowed, then pushed himself past the childish reaction, looking up to meet the blue eye, the familiar glint of the cybernetic lenses on the other side of his friend's face. "None of that, now. We've slowed them down."

"And they go around us, anyway--"

"We've _slowed them down_ ," Peter went on over him, "and so whole planets can evacuate. They survive."

"For now."

"Until we figure it out."

"We won't." The words barely broke above a whisper. Peter's fingernails, blunt and neat as they were kept, bit into Rich's skin. Far from breaking it - it would take much more than that to hurt him - they still got their point across. _Stop this._

"Don't you dare give up now, kid. Don't you dare."

The fierce note in Quill's voice startled Rich, then, oddly enough, brought him back to his senses. A moment, and he nodded, brown eyes on the older man, slightly narrowed as his hand was released and Peter retreated to one of his many salvaged devices. 

Silence stretched, and, after a little bit Quill looked up, seemingly about to ask if they could get back to the memos. Instead, his eyebrows drew down and his mouth twisted to one side in a way that somehow made Rich's inside do a little, strange dance. "What?"

"I just realized that I couldn't do this, any of it, without you."

"That's bull, kid." His voice sounded gruff.

Rich wasn't fooled. It didn't matter anyway. The realization was there, worming its way under losses and deaths and fear and anger with bittersweet warmth. 

*** 

"Should I be jealous?" 

"Of course not. I like living."

*** 

After Ultron, they finally had a little time to work things through. Time that they hadn't actually had, between battles, to figure out that thing which was making each of them aware of the smallest motion the other made in those last days of the War. The thing that made Rich's heart speed up a little at the thought of hanging out with Peter again, and bite him a little when seeing the now-unmarred face, for the loss of something that he'd held dear, for not knowing if Peter was still the same person, now. 

Neither of them was. 

Both of them were. 

They had many bad decisions to make yet, of course. 

The lip-bruising kiss that they shared before Peter got to walk back to his newly minted team with a sliver of hope and both of them with a universe on their shoulders? That kiss was not among those mistakes. 

*** 

"Don't do this, kid."

"What's the other choice? Three of us staying here, rotting, undying but not alive, either? Just getting you back where you can make a difference, Pete."

Quill looked over at Drax, then back in the glowing eyes of the man he'd come to love. The second person in his life he'd felt that way about. Then he lowered his voice, and, by the look in Rich's eyes, he knew that he'd be understood.

"Don't do this to me, kid."

"I've gotta, Pete. I'll give more than this to get you--"

"Just." Peter's eyes screwed shut, fists clenched tight. "Just do it. I can't do this anymore. There's no arguing with you, there never was."

As time and space folded on themselves, the quiet chuckle echoing in his ears almost drowned out the screams that followed.

*** 

The pain was excruciating. Rich knew it would be, too, before he started, but he was only human, after all. He screamed. And he couldn't even lose consciousness - he was no longer human enough for _that_.

Still, even through that, he felt the two drops that had time to fall in the not-void that he was. Hot, and real. They may have been the only thing that stopped Richard Rider from becoming a spec, a ripple, and nothing more - caught as he was between universes, between two cosmic forces. Two tears.

He was human enough to remember, because of them. 

*** 

"Apparently, even a door between universes can be pried off, once one of those universes finally ceases to exist..."

"Just shut up, kid." Sure, he would go back to his blonde, wing-ankled Atlantean, after. But he was here now, dropped in to say hello, dropped in to let him know there was one less death on his conscience. Dropped in to just be there, flark if it mattered. It was enough for Peter.


End file.
